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Exceeding expectation by raising over $101 million, the Sierra Club Centennial
Campaign celebrated its successful conclusion this May with a reception and
dinner in San Francisco's Westin St. Francis Hotel. Volunteer leaders, staff and
trustees gathered to toast the seven-year campaign and honor leaders and
contributors, notably campaign co-chairs Allan Brown and Harry Dalton.
A joint effort of the Sierra Club and The Sierra Club Foundation, the campaign,
launched in 1989 in anticipation of the Club's 100th anniversary in 1992, was
the largest fundraising effort ever undertaken by the two organizations. It
surpassed its goal by $10 million.
"The Centennial Campaign validated the vision of Foundation leaders that major
gifts could expand our abilities to achieve our objectives -- and not require us
to diverge from our programs in order to attract large gifts," said Brown.
The Centennial Campaign has funded more than two dozen Critical Ecoregions
programs and projects ranging from the Atchafalaya River Basin Campaign and the
Clearcut Education Project to Inner City Outings and the Environmental Justice
Grassroots Organizing Campaign. It also spawned the Club's Global Challenges
Initiative, which defined activist efforts toward five overarching conservation
goals: achieving world population stabilization, protecting our oceans and
atmosphere, preserving biological diversity and wilderness, ending the toxic
threat and building an environmentally sustainable economy.
"The environmental movement has far more support from individuals within both
political parties than is generally recognized," said Dalton, current president
of The Sierra Club Foundation Board of Trustees. "People respond when they
understand the need."
While the official campaign has ended, the Club will build on its success
through the Office of Major Gifts. "We've only begun to realize the potential
for major gift funding," said Lisa Renstrom, chair of the new Major Gifts
Committee, a joint effort of the Club Board of Directors and the Foundation
Board of Trustees.
For more information:
Contact Jim McDaniel, director of Major Gifts at (415)
977-5633; jim.mcdaniel@sierraclub.org.
http://www.sierraclub.org/planet/199707/centennial.asp
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